


We're burning bright

by Skrigget



Category: Hemlock Grove
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Falling In Love, M/M, Post Season 2, Roman POW, Sad, Season 1 and season 2, happy-ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 04:22:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4005715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skrigget/pseuds/Skrigget
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roman doesn’t want to be in love with Peter, in fact he does everything he can to tell himself that when he sees Peter and Letha together it has nothing to do with Peter and everything to do with Letha. She is the reason his chest hurts, she is the reason he has to bite into his knuckles not to scream, she’s the reason he cries so much he can hardly breathe. She has to be, because it can’t be Peter – it just can’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We're burning bright

_A gypsy is a gypsy is a gypse_

When Roman realizes he’s in love with none other than Peter Rumancek it’s already too late to do anything about it. Peter is fucking Letha, Letha and Peter are fucking. They’re in love, the pair of them, a Godfrey and a gypsy, what a joke.

Roman doesn’t want to be in love with Peter, in fact he does everything he can to tell himself that when he sees Peter and Letha together it has nothing to do with Peter and everything to do with Letha. She is the reason his chest hurts, she is the reason he has to bite into his knuckles not to scream, she’s the reason he cries so much he can hardly breathe. She has to be, because it can’t be Peter – it just can’t.

But he's not fooling anyone. Well, maybe he’s fooling everyone but himself. He can hardly stand to look at Letha these days, there’s just something about her that makes his skin crawl. He guesses it has nothing to do with her and everything to do with her baby. The fact that his cousin is actually pregnant makes his guts twist uncomfortable and he can hardly look at it. Sometimes he sees Peter place a hand on her belly and rub it gently or lean down and kiss it or even whisper sweet nothings to the unborn child. The sight of it makes Roman sick.

He’s honestly surprised Peter hasn’t caught on, he’s not exactly subtle about it. Roman looks at Peter like he hung the moon and the stars, he looks at Peter like he’s the center of everything, he looks at him like he can never imagine seeing anything so perfect, so honest, so immense and beautiful.

So Peter should really have caught in, the werewolf must be able to smell Roman’s feelings in the air like thick smoke.

At the same time Roman hates Peter. He absolutely hates him, and not just because he’s fucking his dear cousin, not just because he’s already playing daddy to a child that isn’t his and never will be. No, Roman Godfrey hates Peter Rumancek because the boy’ll never return his fucking feelings, he hates him because he makes Roman feel weak and vulnerable, he hates Peter because he ruins Roman through and through and it’s painful – so freaking painful it threatens to make his heart break.

He hates Peter because he makes him human. Roman is used to being feared, Roman is used to being in control, emotionless and indifferent. Only a handful of people has seen him truly upset and Peter was never supposed to be one of them, he was never supposed to worm his way into Roman’s life like this and ruin him from the inside out.

The day Roman watches Peter transform is the day he realizes how utterly fucked he is. Because he’s never seen anything this beautiful in his entire life. It’s horrible, it’s bloody, it’s truly gruesome and it is _beautiful_.

So while the world is burning and crashing and turning to ash around him, teenagers being murdered and a wild werewolf on the run, Roman stands in the rain and watches as his beloved cousin and the boy he gave his heart to fucks and it crushes him beyond repair.

When he wakes up from the coma and sees Peter there with tears in his eyes he can feel something unbelievable tight in his stomach and it makes him want to reach out and grab the boy and pull him closer but Peter – Peter has this look in his eyes, he’s worried for Roman, sure, but it’s like his thoughts are a million miles away.

“Look at me,” Roman wants to say. “Fucking _look at me_.”

And it doesn’t get easier. Every day, every hour, every second it gets a little harder to deal with how things are.

Letha’s death doesn’t do anything good, it just ruins him even further. Everything is trying to ruin him. Everything and everyone and it is working and then Peter leaves and he –

He cries like hasn’t cried in years, maybe ever. He cries over Letha, her baby, over Shelly but most of all he cries because Peter is gone.

_They will steal the rings from your fingers and the love from your heart_

Peter is standing in the doorway, looking at Roman with utter sadness and despair in his eyes and Roman’s heart almost starts beating again. Almost. And he looks at the boy who hasn’t changed at all, is even wearing the same old clothe he did before. It’s like the world hasn’t affected him at all, it’s like when Letha died Peter just stopped exciting.

Roman doesn’t give him what he wants – money – because how can he possibly ask that of him? Roman loves Peter, more than he loves anyone in this godforsaken piece of shit world, and therefor he also hates him so much it’s hard not to reach out and pull his beating heart out of his chest and eat it like the monster he is.

In the end the world goes to shit again just like it did the last time Peter showed up. Not that Roman’s life was that much better or that much in order before but now it’s truly shitty and he needs Peter. And what does the guy do? He fucks some random skank. The same random skank that Roman is fucking and, shit, it’s all so messed up.

In the world full of pain and tragedy and despair they find each other once more and they fit together like two pieces of a puzzle even though they shouldn’t – they really shouldn’t. Nothing about them should fit together, an upir and a werewolf, a gypsy and a Godfrey. Roman is tall and pretend to be cool and collected although he’s actually breaking into pieces and losing control. Peter is short and wears old clothe and he doesn’t pretend like he is anything but hysterical and that somehow gives him a control Roman could never dream of having.

And they don’t fit together at all, they’re awkward and weird, they have an obscene humor and a tragic lifestyle but they fit together so beautifully.

The threesome with Miranda is both magically and horrible. For Roman it has nothing to do with the girl and everything to do with Peter.

And the world around them just keeps burning and they burn with it, too tired to step out of the flames, and in the end everything turns to ashes when Miranda jumps with Nadia in her arms and it caught by some – some –

Roman doesn’t even have a name for it.

He expects Peter to leave gain because why wouldn’t he?

But the boy, the Gypsy, follows the Godfrey back to his house, he sits down on the couch and then he starts crying. And Roman stands there, watching him crumble, because he doesn’t know what to do, he can’t comfort people, that’s not what he does.

Eventually Peter looks up and Roman realizes then that he’s never seen the boy cry before and a little piece of his heart breaks off and falls into his stomach and Roman almost chokes.

“I love you,” Peter says. Just like that. Like it’s that simple. Like it couldn’t be simpler.

“What?” Roman asks confused.

“I love you.”

Roman doesn’t move. “For how long?”

Peter shakes his head, laughs once. “I don’t know. Since I saw you fall asleep with Nadia in your arms, maybe, and I realized I couldn’t live without either of you. Maybe even before.”

Roman doesn’t say anything, he just stares at Peter, expecting him to get up from the couch and run, run, _run._

“Roman?”

“Sorry,” the boy mumbles, “I got lost in thoughts.”

Peter laughs again. “This is not the time.”

“I know.”

They’re silent for a minute or two.

“I love you too, you know?” Roman says.

“Yeah,” Peter whispers, still sitting on the couch. “I figured as much.”

“When?”

Peter shrugs. “You’re not that difficult to figure out.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“What did you want me to say?”

I love you, Roman thinks, that’s what I wanted you to say.

And so their world continues to spin and spin and spin and burn and burn and burn and they crash and fall and they die a little everyday they don’t find Nadia.

“I love you,” they say over and over again because they run out of things to say, because they don’t know what else to say, because it’s the only true thing they have left: they love each other even if everything around them is breaking down.

“I love you,” Roman says when he hands Peter the coffee.

“Love you too,” Peter says as he takes it.

They kiss for the first time a month after Nadia disappeared.

Maybe it should have happened sooner but nothing is ever as it should be with Roman and Peter.

They fuck two days later and it involves a lot of blood.

They argue all the time and they scream their heads off and throw things and they always say “I love you, I love you, I love you” because it’s the endless truth.

The first things they do after Nadia turns up again is get in the car and leave with her. They’re running from their problems and the world, they’re running from a burning world although they’re also burning, the flames curling around them like a destroying, warm blanket.

“I love you,” Roman says when they check into a cheap motel.

“I love you,” Peter clarifies when they stop to get gas.

“I love you,” Roman says as he’s falling asleep with his daughter in his arms.

“I love you,” Peter tells him when Roman agrees to go to Romania to find Peter’s mother.

Sitting on an old chair outside one of many trailers in the trailer park, sharing a cigarette while Nadia is playing with a doll in front of them, they look at each other and they don’t say anything. They don’t have to anymore.

Lynda, behind them, watches them and she can see the flames surrounding her boy and the upir and the beautiful child but she knows she can’t do anything to stop them. So she just hands them each a beer and sits down next to her son.

“I love him,” Peter tells her and nods in Roman’s direction. The upir smirks and rolls his eyes fondly.

“I know, Peter, I’m not stupid,” Lynda smiles. She doesn’t add: I wish you didn’t, because what difference will it make? And she figures she can enjoy this, her son and Roman and their child, outside of her trailer, for just a moment longer and she can ignore the flames and they can ignore the world and it will be okay.

Roman thinks the same, he’s not stupid enough to pretend everything will be this good forever. But for the time being things are okay and he’s going to enjoy it while it lasts. And later he’s going to pack their car and the three of them are going to leave together and they’re going to leave a trail of flames and destruction behind them and if they run out of things to say Roman can just lean in and whisper in Peter’s ear:

“I love you.”


End file.
